


They Live Aboard Tioz

by brigitwritesstuff



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Gen, Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-27 14:42:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14427678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brigitwritesstuff/pseuds/brigitwritesstuff
Summary: Two brothers take on a fantastical job when Captain Ita UlMaranon makes the controversial decision to search Earth for engineers worthy of repairing the warship Tioz.





	1. Chapter 1

          Almost more myth than woman, the world had heard countless legendary (and a fair few untrue) stories about Captain Ita UlMaranon.

          As for **_what_** world, that’s a key differentiation to make. Acraturia, her homeland, knew almost everything. Earth, save for four people, knew nothing.

          Acraturia knew she was the governess of the westernmost region, thanks for a complicated monarchical system that ended up favoring her. They knew she was an UlMaranon - primary female descendant of Maranon, the first priestess of their nation. They knew she inherited this family history from her mother Cassie, a reckless woman who was most likely dead. Her father, Elwood, was also most likely dead. The man she called dad was her maternal uncle, Nute, as well as his husband, Ikja. She had a brother named Raphael. They were inseparable - or so they thought for a long time.

          Ita and her brother went missing around a week after her twelfth birthday. As did their father and mother, but it didn’t end up mattering so much, because they never returned and never got found. Those Maranap woods are vast.

          No one knows what happened to the siblings in the wild. The important part was that they lived.

          When they turned up, the nation breathed a sigh of relief. For half a year it had looked like the Maranon lineage was lost entirely. The High Judge of Acraturia ruled that Nute would have custody, which he and his husband graciously accepted. Countless tutors caught the children up in the school they missed, and the world turned away from the family for a time.

          It only took four years to have their attention recaptured. Raphael ran away from home. He left a note, but the contents was never shared publicly. Ita was despondent. Rumors flew left and right as to what became of the girl in this dark time. She was only sixteen.

          Much like students of Earth, Creatures (the English name for the inhabitants of Acraturia) usually go to college at eighteen. Ita followed this track in spite of her setbacks. She enrolled in the Maranon City Military College and graduated at twenty two as a Captain.

          The title doesn’t mean to Creatures what it means to the United States military. While it’s important and earned through merit, it quite literally just means she pilots a boat.

          Tioz, specifically. An ancient warship that’s been remodeled and restored so much over their long history that no atom of the original vessel remains. It’s not very big, and resembles more of what the Earth calls a corvette (the boat, not the car). What makes Tioz and other Acraturian warships unique from those we know is the wings.

          Two huge bird-like wings, one on either side. Hinged, and set to rest at the sides of the boat when not in use. Operated by several levers that tilt and raise, they’re designed to easily catch a breeze and sail above the sea, if need be.

          Well, Ita wasn’t an unskilled pilot. Her flying and sailing more resembled a young driver on the road - freshness of ability, but the mistakes of one lacking experience. And that’s how she got the wings ripped off Tioz.

          Why would there be two huge posts right by the docks anyway?

          Nothing else got too beat up in the accident. The vessel was still sail-able, but no longer fly-able. There was nothing to worry about, and the king Alphonse suggested she even get newer wings designed. A pair that better represented their culture’s progress in math and science fields.

          She agreed - with some alterations to the plan. Without permission, she and her crew sailed out to that mystic portal to Earth.

          Earth doesn’t know about the portal. Everyone who’s passed through stayed in Acraturia, or another nation of that world. Some boats go back and forth for various reasons, like delivering secret mail to specific people and buying goods that can’t be found in their world.

          There are strict international rules regarding the portal. You can’t just cross over and interact with the humans.

          But Ita did just that. What did she care? Everyone knows the humans are better scientists than Creatures like herself. Their education in those areas is superior. A fair trade, she supposed. They’d always have their commercial airplanes and fossil fuels, but they’d never have the rich arts and history of her people.

          It wasn’t too difficult for Creatures to blend in. They and humans were basically the same, save for an unimportant distinguishing outward feature and several internal differences. She and her right-hand man Connor (an excellent student of the English language) ran into the Pintly brothers almost by accident in a small bakery. The second that Delany mentioned they were college seniors majoring in engineering, Ita was determined to hire them.

          With Herculean efforts in persuasion, she succeeded. The crew returned without them, since they still had to finish school. At home, Ita locked horns with King Alphonse over her clandestine trip to Earth. He caved in to her will. After all, the kid was only seventeen.

          The brothers graduated from Northeastern on May 11th. Ita and the crew came to get them on the 15th, and they arrived in Acraturia on May 19th. Ita moved them into a barn not far from the docks of Hananon - the small town where they temporarily stayed for Tioz’s repairs.

          This was all that even the most informed outsider would know. Far more existed of these people than what was written in newspapers.


	2. REF #1: Map

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For reference

The red region is Maranap - named for Maranon, the first priestess of the Creature people

The green is Saryonap - named for Saryover, a warrior, martyr, and founder of Acraturia, and brother to Maranon

The yellow is Hulanap - named for Hulatrice, another warrior and founder, sister to Maranon.

The orange is Fallalnap - named for Fallalicia, another founder and another sister to Maranon

 

The city of Maranon is in Maranap, represented on the map by the small black dot between the ocean and the sea.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delany and Felix have lunch with the crew.

    Delany looked over at Ronny as he drew, tracing each outline of Clyde’s face. The impatient girl bounced her leg and darted her eyes over to the paper every other second. The kids - teenagers, or young adults, rather - were distracting him from his work.

    “You paying attention, dude?” Asked Felix, pretty much rhetorically.

    “Uh, yeah. What length did you say the original part was again?”

    Rolling his eyes, he unfurled an old scroll and squinted at the foreign text. “Looks like... thirty... _moklay_?”

    Ronny looked over Felix’s shoulder. “That says _twenty_ moklay.”

    Delany found that value on the conversion chart in front of him and jotted down the metric units for that measurement.

    The four carried on like this for what felt like ages. The brothers were transcribing the old blueprint into a format more legible to them. Ita had the two youngest, Ronny and Clyde (hilarious, unrelated, coincidental reference to human history) go to the brothers and make sure all was translated right. While there, Ronny practiced his own work in drawing.

    Clyde could barely sit still. She was too excited to see what he’d come up with. His hand dragged the pencil with expert precision across the paper. It was obvious that this wasn’t his first rodeo, despite being only a teenager. The girl’s features appeared like magic on the page like a polaroid developing. Felix mentally amused himself in comparing Delany’s serious, scientific, clinical diagram to the artistic curves of the portrait of Clyde. The former took up the entire table and required his brother to stand in order to draw, while the latter was humbly small with it’s presentation.

    It felt like eons had passed, but the Pintlys finally finished the blueprint. Delany flopped down in a decrepit wood chair and just shut his eyes, letting his brain detox from the hard focusing. Felix swayed his head in a circle and let his neck absolutely **_CRACK_ ** into a more comfortable position.

    Clyde stood up. “We should return and eat lunch! Come with us!”

    “Sit back down, I am not done!” Whined Ronny.

    She pulled the boy out of his chair. “You can finish it later. Let us go.”

    Delany started rolling up his work. “Hold on, I better take this. We’re gonna want Captain UlMaranon’s approval before we do anything more.”

    Felix stretched and yawned as if he’d just woke up. “Get going, ‘cause I’m hungry as hell.”

    They gathered their stuff and set out to the docks. The path passed through a “wheat” field - or at least a grain that was the Creature equivalent to wheat. The crops were fairly tall by that time of year (the day would be May 25th on Earth’s Gregorian calendar), and it felt like they walked through a sea of green. Farm hands worked in the fields in conjunction with sailors, who volunteered to do the work for the exercise benefits and food payment. The crew of Tioz often trained this way. Joseph, a former farmer and current soldier aboard Tioz, especially enjoyed this work.

    The endless grain gave way to many big stone buildings. Inside were the fancier amenities that couldn’t be found on the ships: kitchens, showers, sinks, an infirmary, storage space, telephones, computers, and toilets (as opposed to chamber pots).

    They passed those too, finally reaching the seaside. The wind blew cool air at them, carrying the smell of salt and algae with it. The magic of foreign waters had yet to fade on the brothers. Boats bobbed in the waves as if they were weightless. The sun - the same sun for humans as for Creatures - warmed the Hulthaw wood planks beneath their feet. At the end of the dock was Tioz, ladder down and waiting for their friends.

    They climbed aboard and were met by the other four preparing for lunch. The only one to stop working and acknowledge them was Ita. “Hello! Do things go well?”

    Delany unusually found himself physically in front of the pack, demonstrating perhaps a newfound subconscious security in where he was. It being so, he decided he’d do the honors of answering her question. “Yeah, we finished re-writing the old stuff. But, Captain - “

    “You may call me Ita. Just Ita.”

    Her informality caught him off guard. He’d been calling her Captain UlMaranon for all the time they’d known each other. Not long, granted, but a little too long to break in with a name change. “Oh, ok, Ita, I just want you to check things out.”

    “Good. We can discuss over lunch. Come with me.”

    Ronny and Clyde went off to do their work while the brothers followed Ita inside the ship. The second deck was just one big room, save for a small enclosed space in the back that had Ita’s bed in it. The big space served as the bedroom for everyone else, as well as the dining room.

    They sat in a circle on the floor to eat with wood crates to lean their backs against. The rest of the crew came to sit when their different chores were done, and Ita went back-and-forth, moving food and dishes into the circle. That day was maybe the first lunch when the brothers didn’t get barraged with questions by the crew. Instead, they just talked. They both breathed a sigh of relief to think that the interview phase was over.

    Doing her best to talk in English so as not to alienate the foreign friends, Clyde debriefed on the morning. “Ronny is drawing me.”

    He showed his work to the group. Ashley nodded. “Very good. You are a very good artist, Ronny.”

    “Thank you. I have the experience.” That latter comment had the tone of a self-deprecating joke.

    “Didja go to college for that?” Felix asked.

    “Ha! No. I am not so lucky. I did not go to college.”

    “No? How’d you end up here then?”

    His expression somehow portrayed pain and joy in remembrance. “Ita found me sitting in the city. I was sick and poor, and she took me here, and now I am a sailor. My job is to sail.”

    Felix looked around the circle. “Did any of you go to college?”

    “I did,” replied Ashley. “For, ah...”

    “Butchery,” Connor interjected.

    “Butchery, yes.”

    “Butchery? Then how’d you get here?”

    Ashley was clearly uninterested in recounting her life’s story at that moment. She pointed vaguely in Ronny’s direction. “Similar to that.”

    “Oh. So everyone else just didn’t go to college?”

    She shrugged. None of them had thought about it much.

    He had still more questions. “How old are you guys anyway?”

    Connor, taking charge as the one capable to count in English numbers, translated their ages. Ita and Ashley were twenty-two, Joseph and himself were twenty, Clyde was nineteen, and Ronny was sixteen.

    Felix looked at the youngest with astonishment. “Sixteen? Seriously? I don’t know how things work here, but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be in school.”

    “My family is farmers. Farmers take their children out of school at fifteen.”

    “ _Sometimes_ ,” Connor corrected. “Not always. Joseph, though, is from farming people too, and he was taken out of school at fifteen as well. That is the minimum amount of education required of a Creature child.”

    Delany was trying not to look too baffled by this for fear of seeming ignorant, but he could only hold back amazement for so long. “Shit, I mean, that’s really young, don’t you think?”

    “It is not worth trying to keep musicians, athletes, or artists like Ronny in school. Their minds are always elsewhere. Even the best teacher cannot make them focus. So we give them a way out.”

    It wasn’t worth pursuing. “Well, whatever works for you guys, I guess.”

    “It worked well for Ronny for a while. He dropped out at fifteen, and his parents expected him to work the farm. He would not. Eventually he left home to go to the city and become an artist.”

    Neither brother said what they were thinking: Were they harboring a runaway?

    “It is hard. There are many artists in the city. He could not find a job, but a job found him when Ita met him one evening on the street. He was ill. She took him here, where we healed him. And now the boy has gainful employment!” He got up to go get something. He returned from Ita’s room with a beautifully detailed map of Gulf of Hujquas.

    Delany’s eyes absolutely ate up the art. “Woah. Did you make this?”

    Ronny nodded. “Ita needed a map of the waters.”

    Ita had now brought down the last dishes, and began to serve lunch. She first put plates of bread and meat in front of Delany and Felix. Next came Joseph, then Ronny, then Clyde, then Ashley, and then Connor. Finally, she got her own food and sat down.

    Felix had observed that she served every meal in the same order, and for a specific reason. She’d given him and his brother a few books in English about Creature culture when they arrived, and there was a chapter about table manners. Apparently, in the past, people would serve children first with however much food it was deemed they would need to be full, and would end with their spouse or, in Connor’s case, right-hand man. Only after that would they serve themselves. The logic was that whoever you served just before yourself was who you felt could most handle hunger. He couldn’t decide if he was honored to be fed first or insulted to be in the same social order as a child.

    Ita didn’t start eating right away. She took the blueprints and spread them out in the middle of the circle. She placed her hand on the papers like she was reading through osmosis, and leaned way over to get a good look. After inspecting thoroughly, she rolled them back up and smiled. “Very good, very good.”

    “Thanks,” said Felix. “It’s hard to translate.”

    “Yes, and I am sorry. However, with this obstacle overcome, I am confident that the rest will be easy. It is hard to translate between languages, yes, but it is harder to translate a creative mind into science.”

    “Yeah, you guys don’t do too much stuff like that here, I guess.”

    “Well, no, we do.”

    Connor quickly swallowed a mouthful of bread to interject. “We Creatures treat technology much like humans treat art. Valued, yes, of course. It is necessary. But it is not our priority.”

    Delany bit the inside of his cheek to stifle laughter. His brother, on the other hand, laughed openly. “How does a society get along without prioritizing the way the world works?”

    Ita, though thick-skinned, clearly took some offense to his brash nature. “We feel the same way about humans.”

    She handed Delany the papers. Keeping the peace, he threw out some compliments. “Just from what I’ve seen, I think you guys have a beautiful country. All the buildings are old and cool, and this boat alone - ” He gestured to the carvings on the walls all around them. One’s eye could hardly pick out one specific object in the countless scenes depicted in the wood. “I mean, Good God.”

    Ita took his flattery warmly. “We are proud of our history, and we show it in our art. You know, every Creature has to take a music class as a teenager.”

    “For real? We require, like, biology.” His mention of the word made both brothers cringe.

    Connor laughed. “Of course you need biology! Every Creature takes it too. Every child should know how to help a sheep give birth. It’s how we keep getting more sheep, after all.”

    The Pintlys furrowed their brows in thought. Felix decided to take this one. “Yeah, uh, we were thinking more along the lines of eukaryotic cells and shit, but yeah sure, that too.”

    Ashley, pleasant as always, decided to give her two cents. “Humans think too much about things that only concern the Goddess. As long as I can treat cow disease and cut it up when it dies, I do not need to know every invisible piece that makes the cow the cow.”

    Felix’s ears could just about bleed at the willful ignorance. “Well, you know, disease is all about the invisible pieces.”

    Ashley narrowed her eyes at him. Clearly she didn’t take kindly to being corrected.

    Ita changed the subject. “Do either of you do creative things?”

    Felix grinned. “Well I’m gay, and where we come from that’s just about the most creative community out there.”

    Ita looked at Connor. He translated for her, and she nodded and smiled. “Good then, good. What about you, Delany?”

    He chuckled. “Well, not gay, so I’ve have to fill the creative void with music.”

    “Ah! An instrument?”

    “I guess the guitar, briefly. I’m no good at it.” Ita looked at Connor again, who translated again. When she understood, he continued. “But I sang in chorus for a while. Our mom made us both be in church choir until we got into college, actually.”

    Felix smirked to remember their previous antics. “Yeah, yeah. Our priest was cool, but he drew the line at us teaching the younger kids the music to The Book of Mormon.”

    Delany chuckled at the memory. No one else got the reference. Ita skipped over it. “We love to sing here! Do you have a, ah, ‘low’ voice or a ‘high’ voice?”

    “Tenor or bass, she means,” Connor said.

    “I’m a tenor, that’s the high one, and Felix is a bass, the low one.”

    Connor nodded. “It is funny how twins can have different voices, but I suppose you are not as much the same like some are. As for us, Joseph is a bass, I am a tenor, Clyde and Ashley are sopranos, and Ita and Ronny are altos.”

    They notice right away that he (probably) incorrectly labeled Ronny as an alto, when that part isn’t often for males. They didn’t ask about it. Ita had more to say.

    “Teach us some human songs! If we are to speak better English, we must learn it in every form.”

    Felix, a lover of the theatrical, was more than happy to oblige. Delany was far shier. “No, no, I’m not a good singer.”

    “You have a nice talking voice. That means you must have a nice singing voice.”

    He smiled and hoped to God he wasn’t blushing. Delany was easily flattered. “Well - “

    Felix tapped him with his fork. “Let’s show them Mr Brightside. You can’t know American culture without knowing that song.”

    He chuckled, only half-nervous. With every eye on him, he caved. “Fine, fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you it’d be bad.”

    Felix tapped out the beat with his fork on the floor, and the others joined along for him. The brothers sang out the first verse with their full-on pop-punk imitation voices. The words were so familiar and the situation so funny that Delany didn’t worry so much anymore.

    “Comin’ outta my cage and I’ve been doing just fine  
    Gotta gotta be down because I want it all  
    It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this  
    It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss.”

    Felix incorporated a little dancing, despite being on the ground. His brother shyly followed along.

    “Now I’m falling asleep, and she’s calling a cab  
    While he’s having a smoke, and she’s taking a drag  
    Now they’re going to bed and my stomach is sick  
    And it’s all in my head, but she’s touching his   
    Chest, now  
    He takes off her dress, now  
    Let me go  
    And I just can’t look, it’s killing me,  
    And taking control”

    Both of them jumped up in some kind of twin telepathy. Who could do the chorus without real choreography? The Creatures ate this up. They clapped along and danced and smiled.

    “Jealousy, turning saints into the sea  
    Swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibis  
    But it’s just the price I pay! Destiny is calling me  
    Open up my eager eeeeeyes!  
    ‘Cuz I’m Mister Brightside!”

    The brothers stopped their performance there. Everyone applauded, and Felix made his brother join him in a joking, formal bow.

    Ita cheered the loudest with a “Haooo!” noise - the Creature version of “Hooray”. Delany laughed. Did he just have fun? At work? With non-family, who weren’t obliged to like him? This really was the twilight zone.


End file.
